S03E02: A Blow to the Head... a Blow to the Heart.
Original broadcast date: September 16, 1977I decided to choose an episode of Quincy, M.D. with some Classic Hawaii Five-O connections, of which there were four: actors Nehemiah Persoff (multiple Classic H50 roles), Moses Gunn ("Nine, Ten, You're Dead") and Norm Alden ("Rest In Peace, Somebody")! It was directed by Corey Allen (former actor in "Rebel Without A Cause" who directed Five-O episodes "Tricks Are Not Treats" and "The Child Stealers").
This Quincy episode is connected to the world of boxing. Luke Stokes, an up-and-coming black fighter (Rodney Hoston) is matched against Ray Ringo (the blonde and white Randy Shields). Stokes drops dead during a fight, which, of course, gets Quincy's attention.
Because several people are very anxious to know what killed Stokes, Quincy and Sam run themselves ragged performing every kind of test. Stokes' widow Laura (Lynne Moody) is sure her husband's death had some kind of drug connection.
There is something suspicious about Stokes' trainer, Ben McDade (Gunn), who is an old pal of Quincy's. Recently he was the trainer for Ringo, but switched allegiances to Stokes because he was getting concerned about mob connections to Ringo. McDade tells Quincy that he has stopped living the high life, spending a lot of money on gambling, which doesn't jibe with what a bookie, Shep Nolan (Alden) tells Quincy. McDade's and Quincy's friendship is sorely tested when Quincy accuses McDade of making money by betting against Stokes.
Quincy has to deal with a bunch of thugs threatening him and his girlfriend over the results of the yet-unfinished autopsy. Gloria Manon, the attractive actress playing the girl friend, Jill Adams, was 17 years younger than Jack Klugman (I think Quincy being a stud like this is a trope for the show.)
Finally, Quincy and Sam are able to determine that Stokes was administered some kind of poisonous substance on his mouth guard during the fight, which caused him to collapse and die. (I would like to know if the toxicology behind this and other "solutions" on the show actually make sense.) By analyzing video footage from the fight, they connect this with when the mouth guard was handed to Stokes during the fight by his manager, Matt Dorsey (Persoff).
Quincy confronts Dorsey at a birthday party for Stokes' young son where Persoff is quite the opposite of the brusque, mob-connected figures he played on Five-O. But there is a mob connection: Dorsey was convinced to help knock off Stokes by guys like those who were threatening Quincy. He is persuaded by Quincy to testify against them in court without much argument, which seems odd, especially considering his life will be likely in serious danger if he does that.
The show has a sucky ending. Quincy and McDade, having made up after Quincy's accusations against the latter, are seen coming out of a restaurant with Jill. The same thugs who threatened Quincy before show up, but McDade goes back into the restaurant and brings out "a friend" of theirs, who is the former world heavyweight champion and one of the greatest boxers of all time, Joe Louis. The sight of Louis makes the thugs jump into their car and run away which is hard to believe.
A point of interest: Robert Ito, who plays Sam, Quincy's assistant, as of 2024 is 93 years old and was born in Vancouver. During World War II, he was interned in one of the Japanese relocation camps, and eventually moved with his family to Montreal.
S03E10: Touch of Death
Original broadcast date: December 2, 1977Tad Kimura (Frank Michael Liu), a martial arts movie star, drops dead while he is making a movie after finishing an intense action scene. He is a cousin of Quincy's assistant, Sam Fujiyama (Robert Ito), who gets a phone call at work about this.
When Quincy shows up at the movie studio, the doctor there says the cause of death was likely a heart attack. Quincy is suspicious, thinking that there may have been drugs involved.
Sam butts heads with Quincy after he takes his cousin's body to a funeral home. He says that there can't be an autopsy because this would conflict with Tad's father's Buddhist religion. The two of them go to visit Tad's parents, and Quincy promises that he will do an autopsy without "violating" the body. Sam points out that legally Quincy can do the autopsy without asking anyone's permission.
Back at the lab, Quincy does some tests on Tad's body, but can't come up with any conclusions. He wants to do his regular procedures, but Sam is pissed and leaves after saying, "I've already disgraced myself in the eyes of my family. Staying here with you would disgrace me in my own eyes."
Lily, a blonde lab assistant (Joanna Kerns, later of "Growing Pains"), shows up to replace Sam, and Quincy tells her to make coffee. She is not particularly amused.
he producer of Kimura's films, Otashi Hiyedo (Key Luke) arrives at the office to try and persuade Quincy not to do the autopsy because if the results are negative, it could impact the box office results for the almost-finished film which was supposed to be released soon. Quincy's boss, Dr. Asten (John S. Ragin) tells Hideyo to get lost.
Quincy goes to see Kamura's wife Takayo (Classic H50 babe Irene Yah-Ling Sun), asking her if there was anything unusual she noticed which might have led to her husband's death. While he is at her apartment, he is introduced to her "uncle," Mr. Yamaguchi (Mako), who says that he is against the autopsy. Quincy says he is going to perform it despite what both of them want (i.e., not to do it), and leaves. Quincy goes to the funeral home where several "friends" of Tad try to prevent him from taking the body, but Quincy threatens to call the cops to help him deal with the situation.
The friends suddenly co-operate, and the body is taken back to the lab again, where Quincy finds out that Tad's liver was ruptured, resulting in a hemorrhage. Quincy goes to visit Sam and convinces him to help him with the case, especially after revealing these new details, which mean that Kimura was likely murdered. Interested now in helping, Sam tells Quincy, "I once heard of a kind of secret blow that people die from days or weeks later," known as "dim mak, the delayed death touch [or "the vibrating palm"] ... According to the Japanese folklore, the method was passed on to a clan of ninjas."
Quincy and Sam go to this martial arts joint to talk to Master Sensei Tobi who knows about this technique, who is played by Harold Sakata, "Oddjob" in Goldfinger (and actor in one H50 episode), whose voice is obviously dubbed, very badly. They get some information from him, but still are stumped as to who might want to knock Tad off. Later that evening, a ninja attacks Quincy as he goes to his boat! Quincy goes back to the martial arts place to ask Tobi more questions, and starts saying things as if he is accusing him of being the killer. This is not a good idea, and Quincy quickly leaves.
Quincy goes back to Takayo's apartment, telling her that Tad was murdered. After some grilling, she tells him, "I was his wife!" Quincy points out that she was "not his only woman ... which happens to be common knowledge." But Quincy has deduced this from what she told him earlier: "He would come home very late every night. And sometimes, not at all. But always exhausted, irritable, isolated. In other words, I was a widow even before he died." (!!!) Takayo belts Quincy in the face.
Yamaguchi is still there, and he tells Quincy that "The secret [of dim mak] was passed down to me many years ago in Japan." He was the one who gave Tad the fatal punch recently when Tad got him a job as an extra on the movie that he was making. (But Tad didn't make any connection here??)
Yamaguchi says, "I could no longer stand by and watch him disgrace a pure woman." Takayo, who obviously didn't know any of this, is shocked by his admission, saying, "You interfering, blind, murdering fool ... You have not preserved my honor, you have destroyed my life." Yamaguchi says, "Then I am the one who is disgraced. Forgive me." He leaps through a nearby window, falling several stories to his death.
This episode has another sucky finale involving a get-together in a bar where Sam is back at work and Lily is soon going to get married to her boyfriend.
This show is kind of lame, as one user reviews (at IMDb?) suggests, "obviously meant to cash in on the recent and mysterious death of Bruce Lee." Irene Yah-Ling Sun is in the show for 6 minutes and 18 seconds. Mako gets "special guest star" billing. He is there for a mere 2 minutes and 10 seconds.
TRIVIA
The shot of Yamaguchi plummeting to the ground is exactly the same as one from Classic Five-O's episode S04E15, "Bait Once, Bait Twice," where Loretta Swit's husband is assassinated, later reused in S04E22, "Didn't We Meet At A Murder?" where a character jumps to his death from his apartment after realizing his life as a homosexual may be exposed. There is a similar episode of someone being thrown from an apartment building which stars Mako as the person doing the throwing.